Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

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lvdkeyes
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by lvdkeyes »

Kanemidlands wrote:
They retired the concorde (20)in 2003,after a crash killing 100 in july 2000.

I would have loved to have had the privelege.
Really?
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Rogie
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by Rogie »

No, never flew.

I'm old enought to remember silly little things like whether it should be spelt with an 'e' or not, and the names of the principal test pilots, Brian Trubshaw (UK) and Andre Tourke ?spelling (France).

Everybody in Britain loved Concorde, it was a national icon. What do we have now? I've just been reading about some vile tower block at the Elephant & Castle (south-east London) - ha, it's now known locally as Isengard - that tell you something?
penguin

Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by penguin »

I never flew on it either. Though in its last weeks of service I coincidentally saw it close up at Charles de Gaulle in Paris, as the plane I was on was parked beside it on the tarmac, and we got to walk past it. The most startling thing about it was its size - it was very small!

Then it did a sort of final fly over of London. It flew very low, and most of the city seemed to see it. I saw it clearly from a high office window in Hammersmith, and it was sort of beautiful. There was a surprising amount of sentiment at its decommissioning. People generally like beautiful things.
Jason1988

Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by Jason1988 »

Rogie wrote:No, never flew.

I'm old enought to remember silly little things like whether it should be spelt with an 'e' or not, and the names of the principal test pilots, Brian Trubshaw (UK) and Andre Tourke ?spelling (France).

Everybody in Britain loved Concorde, it was a national icon. What do we have now? I've just been reading about some vile tower block at the Elephant & Castle (south-east London) - ha, it's now known locally as Isengard - that tell you something?

You don't have the Concorde any more but you still have British Airways, which is nice to fly from the USA to Bangkok.
So much better than Northwest Airlines, which is now Delta. Be thankful!
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by Gaybutton »

You might be interested in a new documentary, "Concorde's Last Flight." You can get it via EZTV. It's on their August 18 listings. http://eztv.it

If you've never used anything like EZTV before, you will need a bit torrent program. I like VUZE the best. http://www.vuze.com . You have to download and install the bit torrent program first. VUZE is free.

Once you have VUZE installed, go to EZTV, find the program you want, and you will see a series of down-facing arrows to the right. Click on any one of them and a file to save will come up. You download that file, which should take less than 5 seconds, and then double click on it. That will cause VUZE to start downloading the program you want to watch. It will come in in .avi format, which you can watch on your computer, make a DVD out of it, or whatever you want to do.
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Bob
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by Bob »

There's been a documentary on the history channel (US) lately regarding the Concorde and the investigation regarding the crash that occurred. A very fascinating program that leads one to the conclusion that the French authorities were hell bent on protecting the image of France versus actually finding out the truth why of the crash happened. What was clear was the following:

(1) There had been prior incidents involving the tires and leaks from the gas tanks in the wings. The Concorde requires a very fast takeoff speed (something like 200 kph) and the tires were prone to not only explode but to do so rather violently at that speed. There also had been incidents of fuel leaking from the tanks before. After one serious incident and investigation back in the mid-90's, a series of recommendations were made to change the tires and to stiffen the area of the wings right below the fuel tanks. NONE of those recommendations were implemented until after the 2000 crash.

(2) The official (French version) of the crash was that a tire hit a metal strap dropped by a Continental airplane which took off from the same runway just 5 minutes before the Concorde took off. That strap caused a tire to explode and a chunk of the tire (not the metal strap) flew up and smacked against the underside of the wing. It didn't puncture the wing at all but the shock of the blow moved upwards and caused the wing fuel tank to rupture, the resulting hole began spewing fuel, and some unknown spark ignited the fire [the one incident in the mid-nineties also involved a tire exploding and a similar spewing of the fuel from the wing tank - but, in that case, there was no ignition of the fuel and the pilot was able to safely make an emergency landing]. There were also apparently some other problems - the plane was overloaded and many also speculated that the fuel tank was overfilled (as a method of distributing weight to the front of the plane, fuel is automatically pumped from the rear tanks to the wing tanks).

(3) Most remarkably, the French investigation failed to include or account for some very critical eyewitness testimony. The French knew exactly when the tire exploded from hitting the metal strap on the runway but, incredibly, at least two individuals (a pilot in a plane on the runway who was watching the Concorde take off so he could continue to taxi his plane across that runway and a fuel truck driver who also was positioned near the same runway and watching the takeoff of the Concorde) both admantly said they were absolutely sure that they saw flames under the wing at a point on the runway more than 400 yards before the Concorde's tire contacted the metal strip! None of that testimony was explained or included in the official French report.

(4) As noted, after the crash and investigation, improvements to the plane were made - which mainly consisted of using
better tires that wouldn't explode upon sudden deflation and providing better physical protection for the gas tanks (which included putting kevlar in the bottom of the tank which was immediately above the metal skin of the wing). Those were the same improvements recommended after the mid-90's incident....but never implemented.

I've watched this program twice and my conclusion is fairly firm that I'd never trust any investigation by the French authorities of their own planes. Give me the FAA any old day as at least they don't go into an investigation with a pre-ordained view with the motive to protect the US governement (thankfully, the US government doesn't own any interest in the commercial aviation industry).
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by christianpfc »

(FAA Federal Aviation Adminstration, had to look it up). No, never flew. (I fly at the other end of the price scale, and not to the USA anyway.) It's a pity that it doesn't fly anymore. Great engineering and beautiful (although I never saw it in real life) as well!
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by fountainhall »

Bob wrote:There's been a documentary on the history channel (US) lately regarding the Concorde and the investigation regarding the crash that occurred. A very fascinating program that leads one to the conclusion that the French authorities were hell bent on protecting the image of France versus actually finding out the truth why of the crash happened.
I've seen the programme, and a couple of others. I totally agree that the investigation was completely biased to favour Air France. What your summary fails to mention is that in addition to the aircraft being considerably overweight with a full cabin and too much baggage, the maintenance staff had failed to reinstall a 'spacer' between the wheels on the left rear undercarriage (meaning the wheels themselves were unstable), and the aircraft was taking off on the wrong runway. This one had insufficient length and so the first part of the take-off was on a rutted surface. Worse, it had to take off with the wind behind and not into the wind, as a result requiring a higher take-off speed. As if all that is not bad enough, due to the undercarriage instability, the aircraft was veering slightly to the left even before the fire started. The captain then had to take off earlier than he should so as to avoid hitting the grass on that side of the runway. At that take-off speed, he simply could not gain the height needed to get him to nearby Le Bourget airport. Had he had sufficient speed, even with the flames slowly destroying the back of his left wing, there was a reasonable chance that he could have made the other airport. Of course, whether he could then have successfully landed an aircraft both overweight and being consumed by flames is the subject of further debate. It was a catalogue of horrific errors!

Some years prior to that ghastly crash, I did fly it once between London and New York. Yes, it was pencil thin. Yes, it was noisy inside (and I was in Row 3 - almost as far in front of the engines as you could get). Yes, the 2 + 2 seating was not much more comfortable than economy class in those days. But there was unquestionably something special about it. Use of the exclusive Concorde Lounge before departure, boarding direct from the Lounge, superb champagne and wines, better than usual food - all served with a special warmth (I believe the BA staff genuinely did feel it a privilege to work on the Concorde), and a guarantee that you would be though immigration and your bags on the carousel not more than 15 minutes once the door had opened after landing. The three and three-quarter hour flight seemed over in minutes!

I do not believe there has ever been a more gorgeous, aesthetically stunning aircraft. Seeing it taxi, take-off or land was breathtaking.
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Bob
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by Bob »

fountainhall wrote:What your summary fails to mention is ...
No doubt about it, I left a lot of stuff out (and my post was a bit long anyway). As beautiful as the Concorde was, there is not a chance in the world that I would ever fly on it after watching that program. Incredible flaws and incredible incompetence in not making design changes and repairs that they knew were needed years before the crash.

On the other hand, I suspect there are similar stories about other planes out there flying the general public. Sometimes, I suppose, it's easier not to know.
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Re: Did you ever fly on the Concorde?

Post by wyrleyboy »

Wow

I flew on Concorde back in 1976, during it's first few months of operation. It was a great privilege and experience.

British Airways crews refused to fly until they had negotiated a salary increase! So we flew from London to Bahrain where SQ crew took over for the rest of the journey to Singapore. The route did not last long because of the problems of flying supersonic over land, we had to route via the Atlantic and Sahara desert.

Ironically when BA did start crewing Concorde it was classed as Shorthaul, so they had to fly to New York and back to Heathrow the same day.

Yes it was tiny, cramped to work on, really quite old fashioned - not your fly-by-wire of the Airbus.

I have some good memories and great photo, but sadly it's retired now like me.
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